Blue Diary

by Alice Hoffman

  Jorie thinks about the day their life split apart, when Ethan’s past was laid out for everyone to see, like an accident on the highway, or a piece of fruit, golden on the outside, gray and coarse within. She thinks of how well she thought she knew him. She would have recognized him anywhere just from his smile. She knew everything- the way he walked, the sound he made low down in his throat when he was displeased, the thumbs-up signal he gave to each and every boy on his team, whether or not the play they made was successful. She knew how he reached for her at night and how she felt when he did so.

  “No. I don’t want to go up there,” she tells Charlotte.

  Does she imagine that most things cannot be hidden in the way that Ethan concealed his past? That if she took a single step forward, the diary in her purse would begin to bleed, and once it began, it would continue until the lawn of the courthouse was awash with it, until everyone’s shoes were slick and blood coursed down the sidewalk, into the streets?

  “Then let’s get out of here,” Charlotte suggests, and they do exactly that. While the crowd is applauding, while Ethan is thanking those gentle, loyal people who support him, Jorie and Charlotte drive out of town. In any other part of the Commonwealth, this is nothing more than a pleasant August night. They turn the radio up, the way they used to when they were girls. Out of habit, they find themselves on the road to Hamilton; they pull into the parking lot of the Safehouse, but they don’t go inside. It’s empty in there anyway, with Warren Peck’s dad, Raymond, holding down the fort, and only a few customers who are too old or too confused about the issues to attend the rally for Ethan.

  “I shouldn’t have made you come here with me that night,” Charlotte says. “You probably never would have met him if it hadn’t been for me.”

  There is a big moon hanging in the sky, just above the trectops.

  “Don’t think that way” Jorie closes her eyes, but she still sees the moonlight. “I wouldn’t have Collie without that night. ”

  Collie himself is currently wishing that he was miles away from Monroe; anywhere at all would do, as long as it’s far from Massachusetts and everything he’s ever known. When he walks through the familiar streets he’s accustomed to, they feel too small for him, lamplit and shadowy; the linden trees block out the sky, even in the dark they take up too much space. Collie usually waits for Kat on the corner; since moving into his grandmother’s house, he can’t bring himself to revisit Maple Street. Tonight, Kat rides her bike to meet him, and because Collie’s own bike is pretty much ruined, the tires wobbling wildly, the frame bent from the time he slammed into the fence, they ride together on Kat’s bike, out to the abandoned house. Collie is behind Kat, his arms around her waist. They are so close, he swears he can feel her heart beating : he can hear his own heart as well.

  They come to the old house almost every night; nobody’s keeping tabs on them, nobody knows where they are. This place is theirs, at least temporarily. They’ve found an old couch, which they’ve set up in the parlor, and they’ve stored flashlights and cans of soda in the rubble. This house was here before Monroe was a town. only fields and apple trees as far as a man could see, but it won’t be standing much longer. Kat and Collie both have the sense that it’s crumbling around them. Each time they come here, they’re afraid they’ll find nothing left, only bricks and slats of wood, all falling to dust. They can feel what little time they have. The summer is fading away, drifting into a green haze. This is what summer will always mean to them, even when they’ve grown old. The way the crickets called, the way they huddled close together on the old couch that was abandoned here long before either one of them had been born, the way they didn’t want to step forward into the future, not yet.

  Rosarie was right; it’s different between them, and there’s not a thing they can do about it. They don’t communicate the way they used to, lighthearted and easy with each other. Everything’s difficult now. A single word has the potential to break their hearts to pieces. Tonight, they watch the moon through the holes in the roof and they’re careful with each other; they don’t talk about the rally at the courthouse ; they don’t talk about anything. When it’s late enough for the raccoons to start to take possession of the house, they head back home, but they do so slowly, dragging their feet as they go. This is always the hardest part of the night: coming back to town.

  They walk Kat’s bike through the dark, quiet streets. It’s late and even those people who attended the rally are already in bed, their doors locked, windows latched. The air is aswirl with mosquitoes, so Kat lights up one of the cigarettes she’s stolen from Rosarie’s dresser drawer; she’s intrigued by the way the smoke rises through the dark when she takes a puff The mosquitoes are chased off but the smoke causes Kat to cough as well.

  “You’d better stop doing that.” Collie makes a face. “It’s plain stupid.”

  Kat waves the cigarette around as if she didn’t care what Collie thought. A hazy curtain rises between them, and all at once, Kat feels scared. She realizes that this moment will be with them for the rest of their lives. She feels weighed down somehow, as if whatever she says, whatever she does, will be wrong.

  “I don’t want to be here anymore,” Collie says.

  It’s a terrible thing to hear your best friend say, but Kat doesn’t respond, Oh, please, she thinks, don’t ever leave me, but she remains quiet. The odd thing is, she already feels as though he’s left her, or maybe she’s just telling herself that so she won’t feel so bad when he actually does.

  Collie is staring upward, searching a sky that is ablaze with stars. White ones, yellow ones, pink ones, ones that have never been seen by anyone else before. Kat looks up, too. She has chills down her arms. She has wreaked havoc and now she is paying the price. She has loved someone completely only twice in her life, and she’s paying for that, too.

  “I would do anything to make you happy.” Kat says. Her voice sounds small, even to herself.

  Collie turns away from her, so she can’t see what he’s feeling for her, but she knows anyway. If they never saw each other again. she isn’t sure he’d miss her. not really; not the way she would miss him. Kat throws the cigarette on the sidewalk and steps on glowing embers so that bits of red sparks fly up. She doesn’t care how far away he goes; inside, she’s never going to give him up.

  Above them a star falls from its place in the luminous sky.

  “Make a wish!” Kat cries.

  It’s such a brilliant light, Kat forgets she’s made a vow to stop believing in such things. She herself closes her eyes and wishes hard, but when she opens her eyes again and looks at Collie she can tell that it’s no longer possible for him to believe. He’s done making wishes.

  Collie walks her home before he goes on to his grandmother’s house on Smithfield Lane. The air is so thick and hot it slows them down; every step takes effort and willpower and courage. The house where he lived before will be painted next week; the buyers want to put their own stamp on the facade, as do any new property owners. Collie stops as soon as they reach the corner. He doesn’t dare go farther. They can hear the click-clack of Mrs. Gage’s sprinkler. They can hear a dog far away, howling in the night.

  That’s when Collie leans forward and kisses her. He kisses her with everything he feels, and then he runs off. away toward Smithfield Lane, away from her. Kat jogs the rest of the way home; she cuts across the lawn that is such a mess this summer, filled with brambles and weeds. She’s flying over crabgrass and stones, all legs and anguish, her heart throbbing like a beehive, abuzz and already stinging.

  Every door is locked, back and front, so Kat climbs in through Rosarie’s window, waking her sister as she drops to the floor. Rosarie starts and flips on the light.

  “Kat?” Rosarie says when she sees her sister standing there in the dark. Rosarie doesn’t expect Kat to throw herself onto the bed any more than she would have envisioned Kat climbing through the window at this hour, but after a moment she understands. Kat is curled up with her legs to her c
hest, trying to stop everything that she feels.

  “You didn’t think you were going to get married and live happily ever after, did you? You’re not that stupid, Kat.” Rosarie runs her hand over her sister’s hair. She herself has not believed in love for a ridiculously long time, considering she’s only seventeen, but she does believe in going after whatever makes you feel alive.

  “Shut up,” Kat says to her.

  “Make me.” Rosarie laughs, then gives her sister a little push.

  Kat slips under the covers. She’s freezing. Everything keeps ending, and there’s nothing she can do about it. “When will it stop hurting?” Kat runs a finger across the burns on her sister’s arm. Her skin is so pretty, but the marks won’t go away

  “I thought you got it.” Rosarie smiles. “Never.”

  For some reason, the blankets always seem heavier in Rosaric’s bed, the pillows deeper. Rosarie reaches to turn out the light. “Go to sleep,” she urges. Her voice is dreamy, as though she’s already back asleep. “Be quiet.”

  Moonlight falls in through the window, turning everything silver and blue. A wind has come up, and the bramble bush hits against the house, and Kat listens to the sound carefully When someone kisses you with everything they feel, you don’t stop thinking about it for a very long time.

  Collie is thinking about it, too, as he takes the long way back to his grandmother’s house, along Front Street, with its darkened storefronts, up Worthington, then through the old lanes overhung with lindens and oaks, past the twisted apple trees that still line the streets. It’s dark and late, but Collie doesn’t care. He goes past the library and stands looking at the place where the old Westfield Seck-No-Further used to grow The air smells of sulfur and sweet apples. Collie feels as though he were seeing everything for the very first time, as though he were a stranger in town. Where is he? He doesn’t know. Where’s he going? He’s not certain of that either.

  He hears a horn honk, and when he turns he spies his father’s truck. For a moment he’s afraid he may come face-to-face with his father, even though he knows this is impossible. Ethan is in jail, and yet Collie’s first impulse is to bolt and take off through the parking lot of the library, Instead, he stands his ground. He peers at the driver, and then is relieved. It’s only his mother there behind the wheel.

  “How about a ride?” Jorie calls through the open window. She’s out late, having visited with Charlotte and Barney for an hour or more, drinking Charlotte’s favorite green tea that has the unlikely name of Chop Wood Carry Water. It seems as if the rally at the courthouse was a movie they’d seen, a performance they simply couldn’t bear to observe.

  Collie comes over and gets into the truck. It’s long past his curfew, and he expects his mother to question him about where he’s been, but she doesn’t mention the fact that he should be home in bed at this hour. As they drive, Jorie thinks about what a beautiful baby Collie had been, with his pale fine hair, and what a beautiful boy he’d become. In the past few weeks he’s changed, however; he’s harder, and quieter, and more withdrawn. He’s definitely grown taller. I le’s staring out at the dark neighborhoods they pass and whistling under his breath. He might as well be a million miles away.

  “Are you okay?” Jorie asks, and when Collie looks at her from the corner of his eye, she can feel her love for him in a deep, fierce way, stronger than it’s ever been before. She can tell he’s about to become a different man than he would have had none of this happened. He’ll be moodier and less patient and far more careful in his choice of who he’s willing to trust. He’s the boy whose father killed someone, that’s who he is, the one who refuses to discuss what happened, who walks out of the room when his father’s name is mentioned, the one she’ll do anything to save.

  “What if we moved away from here?” Jorie makes certain to keep her tone light. It’s not Maryland she’s thinking of, but someplace else entirely. “What if we moved to a town where we could be whoever we wanted to be and do whatever we wanted to do?”

  Collie pays close attention. “What would we live on?”

  “I could get a job teaching. There’s a placement agency that finds jobs in every state. We wouldn’t be rich. Anyway, it’s just a what-if situation.”

  “Would it be far away from here?”

  “It could be. It wouldn’t have to be.”

  “I’d want it to be.” Collie gazes through the window. They are passing the high school, and the dark field beyond. “I don’t ever want to see him again.”

  “You might change your mind. You’ll have to wait and see.”

  She is keeping her voice even. Amazing how she can manage to do that. how close to a lie she feels she’s telling by saying nothing at all.

  Collie shakes his head. “I know how I feel.”

  But Jorie is keenly aware of how such things can change. You might feel something one moment—love, for instance—and the next, all you thought you knew and felt could be shaken right out of you, leaving you clear and free to feel something else entirely, something you’d never expected, something brand-new. Throughout the next day, Jorie considers what would be best for Collie. Her house has been emptied, the furniture put in storage, and Anne and Gigi are helping to sort through the belongings that will be kept in Ruth Solomon’s basement. They stack mixing bowls and fold sheets; they pepper boxes of blankets with mothballs and pack the good dishes in bubble wrap to ensure that none will chip.

  “This is what happens when you stay in one place for thirteen years,” Anne says. “First you own things. Then they own you.”

  Anne herself moved back to her mother’s house with next to nothing. In the past, she would have been jealous of everything her sister owned, but now too many possessions seem like a burden. Gigi, on the other hand, is a collector. She is the proud owner of seventeen pairs of shoes and twenty-six sweaters, and she clearly admires much of what she’s packing up.

  “When you go away to college, you can take whatever you want,” Jorie tells her.

  Gigi is amazed. “Don’t you want it?”

  “She can always buy new things,” Anne tells her daughter. When Gigi goes upstairs to get more bubble wrap, Anne turns to her sister.“I didn’t want anything when I left, either. Not that I’m saying that’s what you should do. I would be the last person to come to for advice, but if I was about to give it, I’d point out the fact that you don’t seem to want anything that belonged to you and Ethan.”

  “Maybe I just don’t want to be bogged down by belongings.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But you don’t think so.” They never used to talk like this, and Jorie certainly never valued her sister’s opinion, but now she’s interested. Anne has the ability to cut through pretense and speak her mind, but even Anne can’t tell her what to do next.

  “The only thing I know for sure,” she tells Jorie, “is that I’m late for work and I support you no matter what you decide.”

  That afternoon, as Jorie helps her mother around the house, she thinks about the way a person’s life can change in an instant. She thinks about that ten-year-old boy who raced across the field, tears in his eyes, blood burning his fingers, and her own dear boy, walking through the sunlight, hit in the back by a baseball. She thinks of the moment right before Jeannie Atkins’s car hit the fence; how the radio must have been playing, how Jeannie and Lindsay were probably laughing, the way she was laughing that morning before there was a knock on their door.

  Sometime after supper, when the sunlight is fading, Jorie takes the phone out to the porch. Funny how she’s memorized the number, as though she’s been calling it all her life.

  The phone rings for a very long time before James Morris answers.

  “Hello,” he says, distrust in his tone. He’s a man who doesn’t get many phone calls, nor does he want them.

  “It’s me.”

  Jorie has the feeling that he may hang up on her, but instead James says, “Hey, you,” as if they were old friends. He’s recognized her voice, an
d what’s more, he doesn’t seem to mind that she’s contacting him.

  A dog barks, and Jorie laughs. “Fergus,” she says.

  “One and the same.”

  “Is it still as hot down there?” Jorie asks.

  “I don’t think you’re calling to talk about the weather.” James Morris has a tang in his voice whenever he thinks someone’s being disingenuous, and it’s there now. “What is it? Are you okay?”

  “Oh, sure.” Jorie is sitting there in her mother’s sun porch with her house sold, her husband in jail, her life a disaster, but somehow James Morris lifts her up. He makes her consider what people are capable of going through in this world and how much courage it’s possible to have. “I think I’ll survive.”

  “I think so, too.”

  “He wants me to come to Maryland with him.”

  “That doesn’t surprise me.”

  Jorie can hear a door slam: James is letting the dog out as darkness falls across the fields. He doesn’t wish her ill. He wouldn’t turn away from her if he saw her in the courtroom; he wouldn’t run her off the road if he noticed her driving through town.

  “Did you read the diary?” he wants to know.

  “How am I supposed to do that? Break it open?”

  “I’ll bet you anything he’s got the key.”

  Evening is falling, here and in Maryland, a still August night littered with stars.

  “And if I read it, what happens then?”

  “Then you’ll do the right thing,” James Morris says.

  “Oh, right.” Jorie laughs. “Like you know me so well.”

  “Well enough.”

  “I thought I knew him well enough.”

  Jorie can hear the blackbirds, out in the cypress trees. She knows what she wants from James Morris, and he does, too.